Samantha Inside Out, Sins of the Mother, and More Set For New Jersey Repertory Company's 2026 Mainstage Season

New Jersey Repertory Company has announced its 2026 Mainstage Season — a year of intimate, muscular storytelling that dives into reinvention, reckoning, genius, and the tangled threads of family history.

Artistic Director Suzanne Barabas and Executive Producer Gabor Barabas unveil a slate of four powerful productions, each guided by a top-tier creative team and featuring artists whose work is seen on Broadway, Off-Broadway, and in regional theatres throughout the country.

“Each of these plays asks us to step closer — to really look at the lives in front of us,” said Suzanne Barabas. “They’re funny, fierce, surprising, human. It’s a season of truth-telling.”

SAMANTHA INSIDE OUT

February 19 – March 15, 2026

Written by Marisa Smith; Directed by Theresa Rebeck; Starring Jayne Atkinson

World Premiere

Samantha, a woman of a certain age has had it with her current life. She’s a high school English teacher, mother of grown kids, and the wife of a cruel, pompous, philandering college professor. After a humiliating encounter with him at a party, Samantha flees the scene and lands in the host’s daughter’s bedroom. Feeling sorry for herself, she opens up, revealing secrets and reviewing the wreckage of her life.

SINS OF THE MOTHER 

April 9 – May 3, 2026

Written by Israel Horovitz; Directed by Evan Bergman

North East Premiere 

A group of earthy, brawling, self-sufficient street-talkers who live by their hands, be that in work or violence confront Douggie, a young man who has returned to the small fishing town where they all grew up. Everyone knows everyone in Gloucester and newcomers need to prove themselves. Douggie must prove to all concerned that he was born in Gloucester and that his mother lived and died there. In doing so, he is drawn into a mystery that threatens to reveal secrets from everyone’s past, and tells a powerful story about unfinished wars that play themselves out with humor, passion and revenge.

THE VIENNA LESSONS

June 4 – June 28, 2026

Written by Jack Canfora; Directed by Evan Bergman 

World Premiere 

Vienna, 1787. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, at the height of his powers but struggling financially, meets a serious and supremely confident teenager who wants to hire him as a teacher, Ludwig van Beethoven. This comic-drama imagines how the relationship between two of music’s towering geniuses (whom many scholars believe met in real life) might have evolved. Featuring some of the great works of each composer, as well as some brilliantly imagined ‘collaborations’, The Vienna Lessons shows how these two men, separated by temperament and age, nonetheless find in each other the unique bond only true visionaries can share..

A CHANGE OF POSITION 

July 30 – August 23, 2026

Written by Jeffrey Sweet; Directed by James Glossman

World Premiere 

There are easier things than being a teenage girl living in a trailer park in Pennsylvania with a mom who pays the bills by sleeping with your classmates’ fathers. The situation becomes even more complicated when one of her mother’s "clients" makes a strange offer.

JUST ANOTHER DAY

Just Another Day, written by Dan Lauria, directed by Eric Krebs, and will round out NJ Rep's 2025 season (Dec 4- 20, 2025) 

New Jersey Awards - Live Stats

Best Musical - Top 3

1. THE LITTLE MERMAID (HOWELL PAL THEATRE COMPANY)

3.2% of votes

2. HAIR (Vanguard Theater Company)

3% of votes

3. SCHOOL OF ROCK (Playhouse 22)

2.8% of votes

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